carefully in-doors that evening, and pulled down curtains, fearful lest She look in the windows and be tempted.  Mrs. Zelotes also waylaid both of the Boston reporters, but with results upon which she had not counted.  One presented her story and Fanny’s and Eva’s with impartial justice; the other kept wholly to the latter version, with the addition of a shrewd theory of his own, deduced from the circumstances which had a parallel in actual history, and boldly stated that the child had probably committed suicide on account of family troubles.  Poor Fanny and Eva both saw that, when night was falling and Ellen had not been found.  Eva rushed out and secured the paper from the newsboy, and the two sisters gasped over the startling column together.

“It’s a lie! oh, Fanny, it’s a lie!” cried Eva.  “She never would; oh, she never would!  That little thing, just because she heard you and me scoldin’, and you said that to her, that if it wasn’t for her you’d go away.  She never would.”

“Go away?” sobbed Fanny—­“go away?  I wouldn’t go away from hell if she was there.  I would burn; I would hear the clankin’ of chains, and groans, and screeches, and devils whisperin’ in my ears what I had done wrong, for all eternity, before I’d go where they were playin’ harps in heaven, if she was there.  I’d like it better, I would.  And I’d stay here if I had twenty sisters I didn’t get along with, and be happier than I would be anywhere else on earth, if she was here.  But she couldn’t have done it.  She didn’t know how.  It’s awful to put such things into papers.”

Eva jumped up with a fierce gesture, ran to the stove, and crammed the paper in.  “There!” said she; “I wish I could serve all the papers in the country the same way.  I do, and I’d like to put all the editors in after ’em.  I’d like to put ’em in the stove with their own papers for kindlin’s.”  Suddenly Eva turned with a swish of skirts, and was out of the room and pounding up-stairs, shaking the little house with every step.  When she returned she bore over her arm her best dress—­a cherished blue silk, ornate with ribbons and cheap lace.  “Where’s that pattern?” she asked her sister.

“She wouldn’t ever do such a thing,” moaned Fanny.

“Where’s that pattern?”

“What pattern?” Fanny said, faintly.

“That little dress pattern.  Her little dress pattern, the one you cut over my dress for her by.”

“In the bureau drawer in my room.  Oh, she wouldn’t.”

Eva went into the bedroom, returned with the pattern, got the scissors from Fanny’s work-basket, and threw her best silk dress in a rustling heap upon the table.

Fanny stopped moaning and looked at her with wretched wonder.  “What be you goin’ to do?”

“Do?” cried Eva, fiercely—­“do?  I’m goin’ to cut this dress over for her.”

“You ain’t.”

“Yes, I be.  If I drove her away from home, scoldin’ because you cut over that other old thing of mine for her, I’m goin’ to make up for it now.  I’m goin’ to give her my best blue silk, that I paid a dollar and a half a yard for, and ’ain’t worn three times.  Yes, I be.  She’s goin’ to have a dress cut out of it, an’ she’s comin’ back to wear it, too.  You’ll see she is comin’ home to wear it.”